Cradles of Civilisation
Ancient History is the first of the major chronological divisions of world history, which lasted from about 3500 BC until 776 BC. It began with the end of Prehistory, when human potential and the necessity for conflict or co-operation allowed for the emergence of the first civilisations. It then ends with the first Olympic Games in Ancient Greece, which marks the start of Classical Antiquity. Civilisation has been one of the great accelerators of man-made change. It began independently at least six times: Mesopotamia in Iraq, the River Nile in Egypt, the Indus River in India, the Yellow River in China, and in the Americas in Mexico and Peru. From these Cradles of Civilisation it slowly disseminated through interaction, stimulation, and inheritance to others. Civilisation would allow the two great innovations of Ancient History to flourish: writing and organized religion. The Potential for Civilisation For a long as we know there has been at Jericho (modern day Palestine) a never failing spring feeding what is still a sizable oasis. No double it explains why people have lived there on and off for about ten thousand years. Farmers clustered about it in late prehistory, and before 6000 BC it had great water-tanks which suggest provision for considerable needs, possibly for irrigation. There was a massive stone tower which was part of elaborate defences long kept in repair; clearly its inhabitants thought they had something worth defending. At the same time, brick building was going on in Çatalhöyük in Turkey, a site only slightly younger. For all that, it was not the beginning of a civilisation, but in certain areas of the world around 5000 BC farming villages existed in such density that they provided the agricultural surplus upon which civilisation could eventually be raised. Civilisation in Mesopotamia The best case for the first appearance of something which is recognisably civilisation has been made by the southern part of Mesopotamia, the seven-hundred-mile-long land formed by the two river valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates; the Fertile Crescent. Unlike the slightly later Egypt, where a stable society was established, Mesopotamia would be characterised by constant warfare and a succession of shifting empires. Sumerians (3300-2000) civilisation had deep roots. The region was thickly studded with faming towns and villages due to the richness of the soil; it must have been much easier to grow crops there than elsewhere, but only if irrigation was managed collectively. The people of different towns long shared a way of life not very different from that of their neighbour. Each grew up round a local temple, which acted as the centre of the region's economic activity. The temple priestly rulers, needing to keep accurate accounts, were the first people to develop a system of writing; the Cuneiform Script. To the modern reader one of the most striking tales of the Sumerian religion is of a great flood that obliterates mankind save for a favoured family, undeniably paralleling the Bible story of Noah’s Ark. They can hardly have derived much comfort from their beliefs, for they seem to have seen life-after-death as a gloomy sad place. The Sumerians can also claim other significant innovations: the first to mass-produced pottery made on potter's wheels; four-wheeled carts; and the oldest literature in the world, the Epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh was a real person, the king of Uruk, the early centre of the civilisation. He was the builder of its great six-miles-long city wall, dating from a little after 3000 BC. Uruk was at times eclipsed by a neighbouring city-state, Ur, famous for its Great Ziggurat, remembered in the Bible as the Tower of Babel, as well as the home of Abraham. The royal cemetery at Ur has revealed an astonishing level of sophistication in objects dating to around 2500 BC: a beautifully sculpted goat, of wood, gold, shell and lapis lazuli; exquisitely ornamented musical instruments; and copper spears and helmets. These raise further questions since there was no metal in southern Mesopotamia; clearly a widespread trade network must have existed. Nevertheless, both Ur and Uruk eventually yielded to a conqueror from beyond Sumer in 2270 BC, Sargon I of Semitic origin. He gradually conquered all the Sumerian cities, before founding a capital city of his own, Akkad. In fact, Sargon can be said to have established the first Mesopotamian Empire with influence stretching from the Mediterranean coast of Syria to the Persian Gulf. The Akkadian period demonstrates the flexibility of the Sumerian writing system, which had to be adapted to meet the needs of the Semitic language. The empire established by Sargon lasted for some 150 years, before slowly disintegrating, and being overrun by tribes from the north. Over the next 1500 years or more, Mesopotamia went through many periods of chaos, with small city-states struggling for power or for survival. There were also times of imperial stability, when centralised control is re-established such as the Babylonian, Assyrian, and Hittite empires. Eventually the independence of Mesopotamia was brought to an end by the Persians, who overwhelmed Babylon in 539 BC. Civilisation in Egypt Meanwhile after 6000 BC, the various hunter-gatherers communities that lived in the territory around the River Nile, were increasingly confined to the immediate river valley by the desertification of the Sahara. The flooding of the great river every year deposits a rich layer of soil making it ideally suited to the development of settled agriculture, while the laborious task of irrigation forced these communities to work together. The unification of Upper and Lower Egypt into a single kingdom by king or pharaoh Menes in 3100 BC, was the event the Egyptians (3100-1075 BC) themselves pointed to as the beginning of their civilisation. His was the first of thirty Egyptian dynasties, spanning nearly three millennia; an example of social continuity rivalled in human history only by China. Egyptian history can most easily be visualised as five big divisions until the civilisation’s greatest days were over in 1000 BC: the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms are separated by the First and Second Intermissions. Very roughly the kingdoms were periods of success, and the intermissions of weakness and disruption. It was the Old Kingdom (3100-2155) pharaohs of the 3rd Dynasties who firmly established order and stability, and the essential elements of Egyptian civilization. All power was centred in the Pharaoh, who was considered a God, owned all the land, controlled the irrigation system, and received the surplus from the crops produced. This surplus supported a large corps of specialists: administrators, priests, scribes, artists, artisans, and merchants. The pyramids remain today to show the early greatness and power of Egypt. They began under Zoser, the greatest pharaoh of the 3rd Dynasty, built at Saqqara in about 2620 BC. Zoser's funerary example was taken to even more elaborate lengths at Giza by his successors between about 2550 and 2470 BC. Pyramid construction provided employment during the months when the Nile flooded, but it was primarily an act of faith in their pharaoh on whom the security and prosperity of Egypt depended. This was also the period when the practice of mummification began, to preserve the pharaoh for eternity. The history of this vast stretch of time is fragmented: raid far south into Nubia; shipments of cedar arriving from Lebanon; mining operations undertaken in the copper rich Sinai region. However, the pharaohs of the 6th Dynasty lost the vigour of their predecessors, and their rule was followed by a century of anarchy and civil-war. Stability returned in the Middle Kingdom (2052-1786), under Mentuhotep II who moved the capital from Memphis to Thebes. Stressing their role as watchful shepherds of the people, the 11th and 12th Dynasty pharaohs promoted the welfare of the downtrodden. No longer was the nation's wealth expended on huge pyramids, but on public works. Moreover, the lower classes were granted the right to have their bodies mummified, like the pharaohs and the nobility. This period was also notable for the first serious effort to colonise Nubia (modern day Sudan), which became of great importance to the trade in luxuries, especially gold, ivory, ebony, leopard skins, and ostrich feathers. After four centuries the Middle Kingdom fell to foreigners, the Hyksos, of whom very little is known. Eventually, a powerful family from Thebes grew strong enough to drive the intruders north, until Ahmose I finally expelled them from Egypt, and established the New Kingdom (1554-1075). This period provides the bulk of the art, artefacts and architecture, other than the pyramids, for which ancient Egypt is famous. At Thebes the great temples of Karnak and Luxor were created and as well as the tombs of the Valley of the Kings. The first powerful ruler was Thutmose I, who vigorously extended Egypt's empire, south to retake Nubia, and north as far as Syria and the Euphrates. His daughter Hatshepsut provides a rare exception in that she took power herself, first as regent for her stepson but then as pharaoh in her own right. She appeared on her monuments in full male attire wearing a false beard. She ruled as forcefully as any man, though devoted herself mainly to trade and architecture. Her successor Thutmose III was Egypt's greatest conqueror, leading his army on seventeen campaigns as far as Syria; he’s sometimes called "the Napoleon of Egypt." Native princes of Palestine, Phoenicia, and Syria were left on their thrones as vassals, but their sons were taken to Egypt as hostages to be to be educated or indoctrinated in the Egyptian way of life. The name most commonly associated today with the pharaohs is Ramses II, partly because he commissions one of the best known images of Egypt, the colossal statue of himself at Abu Simbel. He ruled for sixty-six years, during which Egypt was calm and prosperous. He resolved Egypt's long struggle against the Hittites in Syria, and completed building projects like Karnak. As a result of Ramses' resounding success, members of the 20th dynasty all took his name, from Ramses III to Ramses XI. These last Ramses faced new threats. From the north came the mysterious Sea Peoples; almost certainly the same people as the Philistines. Meanwhile, Libya and Nubia both re-asserted their independence. Amid mounting anarchy, the pillaging of tombs for their immense treasures became common practice. When Ramses XI died in about 1075 BC, Egypt was again divided into Upper and Lower kingdoms. Tough times lay ahead. And not just for the Egyptians. The Late Bronze Age Collapse from 1150 BC saw cultural collapse all over the Eastern Mediterranean, including the Mycenaean Greece and Hittite Anatolia. Egypt would first loss her independence to the Libyans in 945 BC, then Assyrians, and then the Persians. Despite the sheer staying-power and spectacular heritage of monuments of Egyptian civilisation, it is difficult not to sense an ultimate sterility as the heart of this glittering tour de force. Colossal resources and craftsmanship of exquisite quality were employed, and its masterpieces were grave-goods. A highly literate elite utilised a complex and subtle language, but has no philosophy or literature to compare with others. Her civilisation was never spread abroad. Civilisation in India Yet another great river valley where civilisation emerged is the banks of the river Indus in India. By 3200 BC there were mud-brick settlements within protective walls along the length of the river. By 2250 BC, it is clear that a well-developed civilisation had been established, based on two cities, Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro; the civilisation has been given the name Harappan (2500-1900). Life in the Indus valley seems to have been highly organised: streets were laid out in a grid pattern; there was a sewage system with inspection holes for maintenance; the great granaries were designed with bays to receive carts and ducts for air to circulate to dry the grain; and at Mohenjo-Daro there was a great public bath house. They also had the benefit of writing. The Indus script has not yet been deciphered, but the lack of longer inscriptions suggests it was probably limited to trading and administration. The local production included three crops of great significance in subsequent history; cotton, rice, and sesame for oil. The reach of the Indus civilisation was extensive, as far down the coast as Lothal, making it greater than that of Egypt and Mesopotamia together. We do not know why the first Indian civilisation began to decline after about 1900 BC, but it seems to end completely about 1750 BC, which coincides with a violent intrusion into northwest India of the Aryans. Little is known about the Aryans. They were a nomadic people of the Eurasian steppes fighting with bow and arrow from light and speedy chariots, and their advance proved hard to resist. Their society was divided into three groups (priests, warriors and peasants); the foundation of the Caste system. The Aryan holy text is called the Vedas, considered revelations seen by ancient sages after intense meditation; the beginning of a religious tradition which will evolve into the complex religion of Hinduism. After first settling in the Punjab, Aryan influence gradually spreads eastwards along the Ganges and south down the coast of west India. A succession of small independent kingdoms developed, fighting each other, occasionally coalescing into larger groups, then breaking up again for the process to be repeated. By about 600 BC, the two most powerful kingdoms in India were neighbours on the Ganges; the Kosala, and Magadha. Both were rigid societies, with the Brahman priesthood wielding considerably power through their knowledge of the Vedas and their control of the rites. Impulses for religious reform develop in these regions in the 6th century, which led in part to Jainism and Buddhism. Jainism reflected a very specific rejection of the temple sacrifices and the Hindu caste system. At its heart is the principle of the avoidance of taking any form of life, and that all living things share with mankind the possession of a soul. Meanwhile, Buddhists believe in the teaching of Siddartha Gautama or Buddha, whose reflexions led him to propound an austere and ethical doctrine; its aim is the liberation from suffering by achieving higher states of consciousness. Civilisation in China The most striking fact of China’s history is that it has gone on for so long. In about 1600 BC, a tribe called the Shang, which enjoyed the military advantage of the chariot, imposed itself on its neighbours over a sizable stretch of the Yellow River. The city of An-yang was at the heart of the first Chinese civilisation, the Shang Dynasty (1600-1100 BC); a society in which human sacrifice played a significant role. It left an extraordinary archive of the questions asked by the Shang rulers of the oracle, in the method of divination known as Scapulimancy. A priest applied a heated bronze point to a polished strip of bone, and the answer was revealed by the pattern of the cracks which appeared; the priest then wrote on the bone the question and answer. They relied on these fortune-tellers to help them make decisions about all kinds of choices: matchmaking to having children, travel to financial decisions, and even to making war. Several of the inscriptions mention human sacrifices, usually prisoners of war, made to a silkworm Goddess. Silk had been an important product of the region for at least 1000 years before the Shang dynasty. The writing was in pictorial characters which evolved, often with only minor modifications, into written Chinese today. In addition to their writing, the Shang introduced other elements which would remain: chopsticks, and the worship of ancestors. In Shang society, ancestor worship was limited to the king and a few noble families, but it later spread throughout the Chinese community. Their craftsmen also reached an astonishing level of skill in the casting of bronze. By the 11th century, a new power had been established in China; the Zhou Dynasty (1046-256). The Zhou were a frontier kingdom to the west of An-yang, between civilisation and the barbarian tribes. After forming a confederation of neighbouring states, they overwhelmed the Shang rulers, and established a new capital at Xi'an. From here, the Zhou controlled all central China, through a network of subordinate petty-kingdoms, in a system akin to feudalism. By 771 BC, the Zhou had been driven east from Xi'an, by barbarian tribes and rebellious petty-kingdoms, and re-established themselves at Loyang. However, their role became increasingly only ceremonial and religious. By the end of the 5th century, a period of constant warfare had reduced the hundreds of petty-kingdoms to only seven. A lasting result of these troubled centuries was the adoption of the ideas of K'ung Fu Tzu; Confucius. Unlike other spiritual leaders, Confucius taught more worldly principles, a pattern of correct behaviour to achieve a just and peaceful society. His ideals were deeply conservative, based on an unchanging pattern of respect and obligation to those higher in the hierarchy. Confucius ran a school in his later years. His young graduates were much in demand as advisers in the competing kingdoms of China; as civil servants. By the 2nd century BC, China's famous examination system had been adopted, launching the world's first meritocracy. Confucianism competed to a certain extent with another contemporary creed; Taoism. Laozi, the supposed founder of Taoism, is supposed to have written an anthology of short passages espousing the subtle mystery of “The Way and its Power”. Confucianism and Taoism are like two sides of the same Chinese coin; the practical and the spiritual. Civilisation in the Americas The first recognised civilisation in America developed on the eastern Mexican coast; the Olmec civilisation (1200-400 BC). The Olmec would transmit much of what was characteristic of pre-Columbian Meso-America cultures all the way down to the rise of the Aztecs in 1427 AD: the brutal severity of their sculptures, massive stone heads, more than two metres in height, of square-jawed and fat-lipped warriors; their pyramids, some 30 meters high, dominated the surrounding area as powerfully as the priestly rulers dominated the community; and it’s is also probable that they engaged in the ritual of human sacrifice that would reach its grisly peak in the Aztecs. The other classic civilisation of Meso-America is that of the Mayans (250-900 AD), of eastern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and western Honduras. Much of this region is jungle, and it’s this inaccessibility that meant that they outlasted all rivals in a succession of violent upheavals. Of all the civilisations, the Maya made the greatest use of writing in hieroglyphs. It was used almost exclusively for either calculations connected with the calendar and astronomy, and the listing of rulers and their conquests. Thus the elites preserved writing for their own privileged purposes, while denying their societies the liberating magic of literacy. The other great area of American civilisation was in Peru, where the Chavín civilisation (900-250 BC) flourished in the northern Andean highlands. One of its characteristics was stone sculpture of fantastic beasts, of which serpents, birds and jaguars often provide the component details. After the decline of Chavín, the Andean region develops several more localized cultures: the Moche civilisation (100-800 AD) were the ambitious builders of the Huaca del Sol stepped pyramid, and Nazca civilisation (450–550 AD) famed for the remarkable vast Nazca Lines. When Europeans finally arrived in the Americas, they would find that the Aztec and Inca civilisations lacked many features long taken for granted in the Old World: wheeled vehicles; animals for riding and ploughing; the knowledge of metalwork; and literacy beyond the rulers and priests. There remains one other remarkable fact about Peruvian civilization; in recent decades archaeologists have revealed far earlier complex societies from around 3000 BC, the Norte Chico, thus contemporary with the beginning of civilization in Mesopotamia and Egypt. The Rest of the World Meanwhile outside the Cradles of Civilisation, remarkable things had been done by the end of Ancient History. Impressive civilisations had been stimulated: the Kingdom of Kush, Africa’s first civilisation outside Egypt; Minoan and Mycenaeans of the Aegean who would provide the Ancient Greeks with so many of their legends; and the Phoenicians whose alphabet was the major ancestors of all modern alphabets. However, when they are given their due weight, they lack the complexity and enduring contribution of the ancient civilisations. Meanwhile, the light of civilisation had barely touched other region. This includes Western Europe, which has led some enthusiasts to claim its striking Megaliths as another seat of “early civilisation”, almost as if its people were some sort of depressed class needing historical rehabilitation. In the history of the world, ancient Europe was largely an irrelevance when compared to great civilisations that rose and fell in the river valleys of the Near East. The Birth of Religion The Ancient era was a great foundation period for religions. Older faiths were being formalised thanks to the invention of writing, while a wave of great religious leaders between the 9th and 2nd century were providing new ways of thinking: Siddartha Gautama or Buddha (563-483 BC); Parshvanatha (9th century BC) and Mahavira (6th century BC) the co-founders of Jainism; Confucius (551–479); and Laozi (6th–5th century BC) the founder of Taoism. These newer faiths contended with older religions like Hinduism, Judaism, and various pagan creeds. It is extremely difficult to say when and how Hinduism began. The tradition itself maintains that it’s a timeless religion that has always existed. It roots certainly go very deep indeed; one of the key figures of the Hindu pantheon is Shiva, in whose worship many Prehistory fertility cults have been brought together. Historians generally hold that Classic Hinduism crystallised in the first century BC, as a fusion of Aryan, Harappan and other Indian traditions. We can glean more about the history of Judaism thanks to the Old Testament. According to Genesis, Abraham was the founding father of Covenant, the special relationship between the Jewish people and God. He was the charismatic patriarch of a nomadic Semitic tribe, a people probably originating in southern Arabia who had spread to all parts of Mesopotamia 3000 BC. God told Abraham to leave his home at Ur, and lead his people to a Canaan where he promised to make them a great nation; scholars put his likely date at about 1800 BC. Abraham's grandson is Jacob, whose story provides the origin of the tribal division of the Hebrews. God renewed the Covenant with Abraham's grandson, Jacob, giving him the new name, Israel. The twelve tribes of Israel descend from his twelve sons. Famine caused the Jews to move south to Egypt; it was probably in Egypt that the Jews adopted the custom circumcision, which was common there, as a symbol of their Covenant with God. Abraham's people sank to the status of slaves, until Moses brought them out of Egypt with the miracles of the Ten Plagues and parting of the Red Sea. Moses gave the Jews a new sense of unity during journey back to Canaan, with the Covenant renewed in the Ten Commandments. In Canaan a long and fierce struggle ensued against the powerful Philistines, until the Jews were united under a single leader, Saul. The new Kingdom of Israel was established from about 1050 BC. Despite internal conflict and attacks from the Philistines, Israel survived under David with a new capital established at Jerusalem. Israel prospered during the early reign of David’s son Solomon, but old tensions simmered between the northern and southern tribes, and under his son the kingdom split into Judah and Israel. In the northern kingdom of Israel, worship of God became associated with a local bull cult, the Golden Calf, which invited God’s wrath in the form of an invasion by Assyria in 722 BC. A century and a half later, in 586 BC, Judah came to an even more violent and sudden end. The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem for several months. When the city fell, it was destroyed, and the people either fled to Egypt or to captivity in Babylon. In adversity, these two groups established a lasting and powerful concept; the ability of Jews to retain their own identity. After the Persians conquered Babylon in 539 BC, they allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem. It was during the exile that synagogues appeared, and on the return to Jerusalem that the Torah took its lasting form; the Bible would be the great unifying agent of Judaism. The concept of the Messiah also entered Judaism during the dark times of Babylonian exile.